The S#5 Excelsior

The excelsior in 5 moves to mate has been plenty done directmates and helpmates, but I had yet to see it in a selfmate. I did a search, but all that turned up was a s#6 that is easily converted to be 5 moves long.

Terho Marlo, Suomen Tehtäväniekat 05/2010, P1178122
s#6(= 9+9 )

As such, I did some tasking to find the most economic positions for underpromotion excelsiors. Here is my work for the fun of it!

s#5(= 4+4 )

s#5(= 5+4 )

s#5(= 3+5 )

As far as I can tell, a queen promotion can’t be done it 5 moves, but in can be easily done in a 6-move miniature.

Seetharaman, the promotions to B and R contain selfmate motivation (avoid to attack the black battery). In a stalemate the Q-promotion would simply work too.
But generally you are right, mainly this are stalemate schemes.

It's indicative how such a mechanical idea of 'excelsior' almost automatically turns off the human creativity and intelligence. Instead of critical thinking we are all too ready to apply mechanical procedures, happily careless about the essence.

How can Frank (post 8) 'see' 3.- B~ ??, overlooking the checks 3.e6+,4.e7+ & 5.e8Q+
or Hauke (post 3) not being aware of the intrinsic cooks in both examples
or Rewan missing s#1 with 5 solutions in his very 1st example
???

@Nikola: It's teh internets, I don't check my schemes
(not problems!) that hard as e.g. for the SCHWALBE,
where merely the themes will be botched :-)
I immediately spotted after posting: Oopsie, e3.
Then I tried ten minutes in vain to add sPf7/wRg7 so that
the P is pinned until after another ten minutes I
realized it's no stalemate anyway :-)
@Rewan: Qc5 Pd5 instead of Pb5 Rc6 might save Pg6.